Liberated for Love by Looking to the Reward

Faith Makes the Difference When we Walk Through Crisis

As we look at four more instances of what faith produces, keep
in mind the definition from Hebrews 11:1: "Now faith is the
assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."
So each of the four acts in this text is produced by faith, that
is, by the assurance of something hoped for, namely, God's promise
to be all that the believer needs. So watch for that. Watch for the
way hope in God produces a new kind of behavior (which I think we
should call love). And notice too that these four acts of faith
cover a period of eighty years from Moses' birth to the time he led
the people out of Egypt. And finally notice, as we read, that in
these four moments of Moses' life the stress is tremendous. Each of
them is a life and death situation that would cause you to be
knotted up inside and scarcely able to sleep at night - like Dane
and Mirjam Hanson experienced when they had to evacuate Albania and
like Steve, Julie and Luke Anderson experienced when they had to
evacuate Congo, and the Deckers when they had to leave Liberia -
and like some of you may be experiencing right now because of
threats looming in your life. So watch now what faith produces.

V 23) By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three
months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child;
and they were not afraid of the king's edict.

V 24) By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called
the son of Pharaoh's daughter; 25 choosing rather to endure
ill-treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the passing
pleasures of sin; 26 considering the reproach of Christ greater
riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the
reward.

V 27) By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king;
for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen.

V 28) By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the
blood, so that he who destroyed the first-born might not touch
them.

These are four crisis points in Moses' life. And the point of
these verses is that faith - the assurance of things hoped for -
makes all the difference at those points in our lives. Let's look
at them and ask God to teach us how to walk through crises by
faith.

Crisis #1 in Moses' Life - Were his Parents Afraid?

The first has to do with the faith of Moses' parents when he was
born. You recall that the king of Egypt was fearful of the growing
number of Jewish males. So he ordered them to be killed at birth:
Exodus 1:22, "Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, 'Every
[Jewish] son who is born you are to cast into the Nile, and every
daughter you are to keep alive.'"

Notice that there are two threats in that edict from the king:
one is explicit, that Jewish baby boys are to be killed; the other
is implicit, that if you disobey this command and keep a Jewish
baby boy alive, you will be disobedient to the king's law and risk
your own life. In other words, parents had two choices: they could
kill their sons and save themselves, or they could try to save
their sons and risk their own lives. There was no middle way.

Now that's important to see, because Hebrews 11:23 doesn't make
sense if you don't see it. It says, "By faith Moses, when he was
born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw
he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king's
edict." Someone might respond to that and say, "Of course, they
were afraid of the king's edict; otherwise they would not have been
hiding the baby. They would have been showing him off to the
neighbors if they weren't afraid of the king's command that baby
boys be killed."

So what does verse 23 mean, that they hid their baby son
"because . . . they were not afraid of the king's edict." You would
expect, "They hid their son because they were afraid," not ". . .
because they weren't afraid." And surely that's right: if they had
not been afraid for their son's life, they would have carried him
around in public.

The answer is that there are two threats in the king's edict,
not just one. One against the babies and one against those who
don't kill the babies. If you kill the baby you save your life. If
you don't kill your baby, you risk your life. So when Moses'
parents decide they are not going to drown Moses in the Nile River
but hide him, they are risking their lives. In other words, they
look the fear of death and perhaps torture in the face and say: we
will not give in to you. We will not kill our son out of fear for
our own lives. Fear of death will not control us.

And the point of this text is: that act of courage against the
king, and that act of love toward their son comes from faith. "By
faith Moses . . . was hidden by his parents . . . because they were
not afraid of the king's edict."

How does faith produce that kind of courage and love? The
definition from Hebrews 11:1 gives the answer. "Faith is the
assurance of things hoped for." Faith frees us for this kind of
radical courage and risk-taking and love because it is the
assurance that what God promises to those who die in the path of
love is better than what the world promises those who shun risk and
save themselves. More simply, faith in God's promises frees us from
the fear of death and makes us brave in the risks of love.

Human Ingenuity or Faith in God?

There's a minor point here as well as this main one. It's
important for all of us who want our lives to be on the cutting
edge where there are risks and dangers and great crises and great
needs. It's a point of realism and balance. Notice. Moses' parents
risked their lives by not killing their baby. But they did hide the
baby. Some people's minds - immature minds with little real-life
experience and out of touch with the complexities of the soul -
might say, "If Moses' parents really had faith, they would have
entrusted the child's care to God and just walked around the
community with their new baby. That would have been real
faith."

How would you respond to somebody like that? - people who say,
"They don't trust God; they're using human ingenuity to protect
their baby instead of entrusting him to God"? Perhaps the best way
to respond is simply to tell them to read their Bibles and read
them carefully. Because the Bible says, in Hebrews 11:23, that
Moses' parents did indeed have faith, and they hid their baby. Not
killing the baby put their lives at risk and was a great act of
faith and love. Hiding their baby was a act of human, but
God-given, wisdom (and no less from faith); and to do otherwise
would probably have been presumption - like the idea of Jesus
jumping off the roof of the temple to see if God would catch him
(Luke 4:9-12).

So how shall we apply this today? One way would be to say that
following God's call to work with AIDS patients is an act of
risk-taking faith; and wearing rubber gloves during treatments is
an act of faithful wisdom. Following God's call to live in a rough
neighborhood is an act of risk-taking faith; and buying deadbolts
is an act of faithful wisdom. Following God's call to Guinea or
Tanzania or Khazakstan or Uzbekistan with your children is an act
of risk-taking faith, and giving your children vaccinations and
malaria treatments is probably an act of faithful wisdom.

In other words, living by faith is often perplexing - which is
why, I think, Paul prays incessantly that his converts would have
"spiritual wisdom . . . and bear fruit in every good work"
(Colossians 1:9-11). Which risky, inconvenient, dangerous,
inopportune "good works" we should do will seldom be written in the
sky or spoken in a dream. (That is why Paul prays for spiritual
wisdom.) They will be wrestled into by agonizing prayer and
Biblical saturation and self-mortification and - above all - faith,
the assurance of things hoped for. Radical confidence in God's
promise to take care of us is the main key to unlock the power and
path of risk-taking love.

Crisis #3 in Moses' Life - Was Moses Afraid?

Now jump with me over the second act of faith in Hebrews
11:24-26 to the third act in verse 27. I make this move because
what we see here in verse 27, forty years later, is a situation
that Moses faced which is a lot like the one his parents faced at
his birth. We will understand it better if we see it in connection
with what we saw in verse 23.

According to Exodus 2:11-12, Moses began to identify himself
with his Jewish kinsmen and be indignant at their slavery. He found
an Egyptian beating a Jew and intervened and killed him. He thought
his act had been done secretly, but the next day he discovers the
word has gotten around. Exodus 2:14 says, "Then Moses was afraid,
and said, 'Surely the matter has become known.'" Then the next
verse says, "When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he tried to kill
Moses. But Moses fled from the presence of Pharaoh and settled in
the land of Midian."

Now here is a problem like the one we saw in verse 23: is Moses
afraid when he leaves Egypt or isn't he? Were his parents afraid
when they hid their baby or weren't they? In verse 23 it says that
his parents hid their baby because "they were not afraid of the
king's edict." Here in verse 27 it says, "By faith [Moses] left
Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king." Yet we saw that Moses'
parents were at least afraid enough to hide their baby. And here we
read in Exodus 2:14 that Moses was afraid when he
heard that his
violence was known.

So you see the similarity between these two crises.

So did Moses leave Egypt out of fear or didn't he? It's like
asking: did his parents hide Moses from Pharaoh out of fear or
didn't they? The answer for his parents is that they did fear for
the child's life; but they did not act out of fear for themselves;
they risked their lives, and they did it by faith in future
grace.

It's a little different with Moses, but not basically different.
He probably did save his life by leaving Egypt. But was fearful
self-preservation his motive in leaving? When verse 27 says, "By
faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king," did the
writer forget about Exodus 2:14 and the fear Moses felt, or is he
pointing us to something very crucial and very deep in Moses' heart
so that we won't misconstrue Exodus 2:14?

The key is found in the word "endured" in verse 27 - or your
version may have the word "persevered." Verse 27: "By faith he left
Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured - he
persevered - as seeing Him who is unseen." In other words, it
wasn't basically fear that caused Moses to leave Egypt, it was
"endurance." Endurance?

In what? Endurance implies a chosen path of difficulty that you
are tempted to forsake but you hang in there and "endure." What is
the writer referring to when he says in verse 27 that Moses "left
Egypt . . . for he endured . . ."? What path had Moses chosen that
required endurance to stay on and even led him out of Egypt for 40
years before he came back to rescue his people?

Crisis #2 in Moses' Life - He Endured

The answer was given in verses 24-26. Now we can go back and
pick up the second act of faith that we passed over. These verses
describe a radically dangerous and costly path that Moses had
chosen before (mark this!) he felt threatened by the Pharaoh. What
was this path? Verses 24-26:

By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the
son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather [there's the chosen
path] to endure ill-treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy
the passing pleasures of sin; considering the reproach of Christ
greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to
the reward.

The writer expresses the dangerous, painful path Moses had
chosen in two ways: First (in verse 25) it is the choosing of
ill-treatment with the people of God over the passing pleasures of
sin. Second (in verse 26) it is the choosing of reproach for Christ
(the Messiah) over the treasures of Egypt. Now don't miss this! The
choice was made before the threat of Pharaoh. The bridges had
already been burned between Moses and Egypt. It had happened in his
heart. Not yet geographically, but spiritually and morally he was
gone already. Do you see that?

Now the question was, would he endure in this chosen path of
suffering for the people of God and the glory of the Messiah? Or
would he cave in - like so many cave in today to the Egypt - the
passing pleasures - of this world?

Was Moses' flight from Egypt a capitulation to a self-serving,
fearful, pursuit of ease and comfort and safety? Verse 27 says, No.
"By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king" - fear
was not his basic mindset. What was? Next phrase: "For he endured."
In what? In the same deep motive that caused him to choose
ill-treatment with the people of God and reproach for the sake of
the Messiah, namely, "he endured as seeing Him who is unseen"
(verse 27b). In other words, "by faith." By looking to God's
promise, not Pharaoh's threat.

This is the same motive that drove his radical choices in verses
24-26. You can see it at the end of verse 26: he chose
ill-treatment with God's people and he chose reproach for the
Christ "because he was looking to the reward." "Looking to the
reward" in verse 26 corresponds to "seeing him who is unseen" in
verse 27. He had, by faith, burned the bridges in his mind (by "the
assurance of things hoped for"), and then, by faith, he burned them
in his flight (by "the conviction of things unseen").

Yes, he experienced fear when the word spread that he had killed
an Egyptian while saving a Jew - just as his parents had
experienced fear when they saved their baby boy and risked their
own lives. But hiding their baby was not an act of fearful,
self-serving unbelief, and Moses' leaving Egypt was not an act of
fearful, self-serving unbelief either. It was a persevering, an
enduring, in spite of fear, in the obedience of faith. He wasn't
driven merely or mainly by fear; he looked to the unseen God to
work out some purpose for his people, and forty years later he
would discover what that purpose was, and he would be back.

Burning our Bridges by Faith

The bridges were burned between Moses and Egypt well before he
was threatened by Pharaoh - they were burned in his heart and they
were burned by faith. That's what faith does all through this
chapter. Faith is a hunger for God that triumphs over our hunger
for the pleasures of this world. And so faith unleashes radically
God-centered, risk-taking, people-loving behavior.

Let's be like Moses this morning. Let's look to the reward of
God's promises, as it says in verse 26. And let's look to the God
who is unseen, as it says in verse 27. And let's be so hungry for
the superior worth of our glorious God that the bridges are burned
to a hundred sins and a hundred fears.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

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